What is your map?

What is your map?

Ron Kurtz in his book ‘The Hakomi Method’ points out that people are self-creating, self-maintaining beings. The self starts with our genetic inheritance and is influenced by early experiences. As children we make a map of who we are and who we love and how we will communicate. We make a map of what kind of world it is, what’s possible in it and what isn’t. Then as adults we keep using the map without changing it much. The more our world threatens to change the self the more energy we use to defend it. We forget the self is changeable. All our strongly held beliefs, attitudes and habits were once new ideas that we were trying out and playing with. The map maker is still a part of us. Psychotherapy is an opporunity for self- discovery, self – recreation. Gentleness, time and support that are offered in therapy are needed to study the self.